After seeing Yao Shunyu's hand gestures, Huang Jun and Luan Hui, who were hiding not far away, cautiously walked out.

To the surprise of the two, Yao Shunyu and Li Bai also questioned and verified their identities.

Once out of sight, anything could happen in this ghostly place.

After confirming that there were no problems with their identities, Li Bai also focused her attention on the road. It seemed that both teams had been tricked early on.

The immediate priority was to confirm the location of the ghost and figure out what exactly was going on.

"Does anyone have incense on them?" Li Bai asked, thinking it wouldn't hurt to offer some to whoever was blocking their way.

Everyone looked at each other and shook their heads.

Huang Jun swallowed hard, looking at the endless dark forest around him. A feeling of despair, as if they would never escape, spread through him. "Sister Li, Elder Sun didn't give us anything like that."

Yao Shunyu had a flash of inspiration. "Will incense ash work?"

Li Bai pursed her lips. To be honest, she didn't know, but she figured it was worth a try. She walked to the middle of the road and stood with her legs slightly apart, ready to bend over and look back through her legs.

"The moment I bend over, you scatter the incense ash behind me," Li Bai instructed.

According to the rules, four incense sticks should be offered at this moment - three to the gods and four to the ghosts. By bending over and looking back through the legs, the vision through the burning incense smoke might allow one to see the ghost.

"No, it's too dangerous. I'll do it." Thinking about it, this was obviously very dangerous. Some things are better left unseen; seeing them might lead to immediate entanglement. Yao Shunyu didn't want Li Bai to take the risk.

"Don't argue with me. You really can't do this. I'm a woman, and my yin energy is heavier than yours. Those things might not even notice me. And if I encounter trouble, I'm confident I can get away."

Seeing Li Bai's insistence, Yao Shunyu waved his hand and told the people around him to step away, to move further away.

Huang Jun was the quickest, practically fleeing. Wu Qiang and Lü Zhangyuan were more conscientious, telling Li Bai to be careful and shout loudly if she encountered danger, and they would try to help.

Once the outsiders had left, Yao Shunyu's eyes sharpened. He leaned in close to Li Bai and said firmly, "Don't be reckless. Just roughly confirm where the ghost is. This deep mountain forest is probably not a simple ghost wall. I suspect it's a Resentful Ghost Road. Too many people have died here, and the resentment is too strong."

"That Wu Qiang doesn't seem right to me. He's too innocent, and he even knows about the Corpse Burial Kiln. I suspect he's the last Crimson."

"We have no other choice now. Here's what we'll do: you just focus on determining the ghost's location and the direction of the road. I'll find a chance to launch a heavy sneak attack on him. Once we succeed, we'll tie him to a tree and let him watch the road for us."

"I'll handle the specifics. Don't interfere, or the others will resent you. I've seen what the Yelling Man does before, and it won't go wrong."

Knowing that Yao Shunyu was thinking of her, Li Bai had no reason to refuse. "Don't rush. Let me see how things go first."

"Okay, be careful."

Taking a deep breath, Li Bai cleared the distracting thoughts from her mind, held her breath, and slowly bent over, looking back through her legs. At the same time, Yao Shunyu suddenly threw a handful of incense ash.

Through the hazy ash mist, Li Bai seemed to see something incredible. A few seconds later, her body trembled violently, and she immediately stood up.

"What's wrong?" Yao Shunyu looked at Li Bai anxiously, afraid that she had been entangled by those ghostly things.

After getting up, Li Bai frowned, thought for a moment, and then stepped back. "It seems the situation is different from what we thought. Those things... well... they're strange."

Li Bai didn't go back, but turned and plunged into the forest. Huang Jun and the others, who were watching from a distance, immediately followed.

In Li Bai's description, she had indeed seen those things, and there were many of them. But strangely, they didn't show any aggression. Instead, they all had their backs to Li Bai, their postures bizarre and stiff, uniformly extending their right arms and pointing into the forest.

Moreover, they were all men, wearing different clothes, presumably all those who had been trapped in Blackwater Village and died tragically.

"Could it be... could it be that these dead people have something to say to us?" Huang Jun's mind filled with images of Li Bai's description, and he shuddered.

Not sensing any malice from those things, Li Bai was more inclined to believe this. Moreover, now that they were trapped, if they didn't follow the wishes of those things, they probably wouldn't be allowed to leave.

The road in the forest wasn't difficult to walk. Soon everyone understood that someone had walked this road before. Some stones that could easily trip people had been dug out and thrown far away. And the further in they went, the better the vegetation and trees grew.

Li Bai seemed to know very well what she was looking for. She stopped under a huge, crooked-necked tree.

Even though no one was speaking, Wu Qiang couldn't help but wrap his clothes tighter, muttering softly, "Where is this? I feel so cold."

Coming near this tree, it felt like the temperature had dropped. Huang Jun raised his arm and found that goosebumps had appeared.

It wasn't just cold; there was an indescribable chill.

Li Bai took a few steps back, spread her legs slightly, turned her back to the crooked-necked tree, and tried again, just like before.

This time, the scene she saw was even more terrifying. Under the crooked-necked tree stood a crowd of people. They had their backs to Li Bai, still the same strange posture as before, but this time their raised arms were slightly offset, pointing under the crooked-necked tree.

"There's something under the tree. Dig."

At Li Bai and Yao Shunyu's urging, everyone immediately started digging. But this time, everyone was dumbfounded. The ground under the tree was densely packed with corpses. Some of these corpses had been buried for a long time, some only a week, not yet fully decomposed, while others had long since turned into skeletons.

Yao Shunyu even saw a broken skeleton entangled in thick, gnarled tree roots, which must have been there for at least a dozen years.

Several of these corpses caught Li Bai's attention. These corpses were in very strange positions. They were all gathered together, face down, their bodies arched and pressed on top, as if to protect something underneath.

As she observed more carefully, Li Bai's eyebrows twitched. She realized that these corpses were the same ones that had appeared at the beginning. They had their backs to her, pointing the way to this place with their hands.

Under Li Bai's direction, several people used a lot of effort to pull these corpses apart. Underneath the corpses was a large backpack, so dirty that its original color was indistinguishable.

Li Bai had a feeling that this was what the ghosts wanted them to find.